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Wednesday, 20 November 2013

'Standing up for Beards' by A L Berridge

You can’t do history without doing beards. Only a few have obviously
starring roles, such as the one grown by Philip II of Spain to be ‘singed’ by
Francis Drake, but even the most ordinary set of whiskers can insinuate its way
into the history books – like the one Thomas More laid carefully away from the
executioner’s block on the grounds that it ‘had not committed treason’.

A flammable beard An innocent beard

It doesn’t even have to work that hard at it. Beards make a
difference simply by being there, and through the centuries their presence (or
absence) has been used to distinguish married men from bachelors, warriors from
novices, clergy from laymen, Protestant from Catholic, Royalist from
Parliamentarian, Jew from Gentile, Orthodox from Dissenter, and master from
slave. In different times and places beards have been taxed, forbidden, and compulsory,
and even in the 19th century a mistake could be costly. In 1830 a certain
Joseph Palmer offended the people of Massachusetts by sporting a full beard, and
his attempts to defend himself from forcible shaving landed him in prison.

A beard in the wrong place

However we look at it, beards matter, and their presence is the very texture of
the past. This next battered print is one of my very favourite historical photographs, depicting the Master of Peterhouse greeting the Master of Trinity
outside the Senate House in about 1906 – and I defy you not to see what I love about it…

Two Learned Beards

What would this picture be without the beards? These are beards of gravitas, as
important as the ‘philosopher’s beard’ of Sophocles, and they define these two
gentlemen even more than the gowns of their official status.

It has always been so. The mere style of a beard could advertise
one’s status and pedigree – as in Ancient Egypt, where even a woman might wear
a false beard if she was of royal birth. Their very fashion is history, and the
greatest legacy of some historical figures can be traced in the styling of a ‘Franz
Josef’ or a ‘Vandyke’ or the ‘Imperial’ of Napoleon III. Whole studies have
been devoted to the significance and variety of historical forms, from John
Adey Repton’s 1835 magnum opus ‘Some Account of the Beard and the Moustachio’ to
Edwardian Upton Uxbridge Underwood’s ambitious little booklet on ‘Poets Ranked by Beard Weight’. Beards are truly the stuff of history, and we ignore
them at our peril.

The Stuff of History

So why do we? When we look at historical fiction on the
bookshop shelves, how come so few of the covers depict men with beards? Is
there a conspiracy on the part of publishers and cover artists to whitewash the
whiskers out of history, and present only images of men that appeal to popular
taste?

It certainly looks like it – especially when the potential
readership is predominantly female. I googled ‘Mills & Boon Historical
Romances’ and was instantly dazzled by the gallery of gleaming manly jaws.
Period and subject matter made no difference. Even when it came to Vikings
and barbarians, there was never a beard in sight.

Invisible beards

Perhaps it’s defensible in this particular genre. The
primary function of these heroes is to be sexually attractive, and history must
bow to the apparently common modern view that facial hair is acceptable only on bikers,
real-ale drinkers, and sandal-wearing ‘beardy-weirdies’. Beards may have been a
fact of historical life, but so were bad teeth and personal hygiene, and you
won’t find many of those in a historical romance.

The action-adventure and military genres are obviously a different matter. Beards have always held special significance for soldiers and warriors, and nobody would expect writers to steer clear of them in their novels. Indeed in some areas - such as Vikings, pirates or
some periods of Crusaders – the beard is all but compulsory.

Author Robert Low being told he can't have beards on his Vikings

But there are other ways, and even if the writer says ‘beard’,
cover-artists still display considerable ingenuity in their determination not
to show them. Whiskers are hidden behind helmets, lost in the distance, and done
away with altogether by the use of symbolic artefacts. Every effort is made to
ensure no-one could possibly look at the book and think ‘ugh – a beard’.

That’s not to say we’re not allowed them at all. Beards are
perfectly acceptable in supporting roles like ‘hero’s friend’, while in villains
or wise old men they’re actually desirable. Comedy can take the curse off even
the beard of a leading man, as we see with George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman,
who regards his manly whiskers as part of his allure. In other words, we can
have beards on any character we like – except someone we might aspire to
imitate or go to bed with.

It seems to have always been that way. We’re brought up to
expect clean-shaven heroes, and I remember being shocked to discover that the
Lt Chard who commanded at Rorke’s Drift actually looked very different from the
Stanley Baker who tightened his jaw through ‘Zulu’ like an advert for Gillette.

Now you see it........ Now you don't

But maybe there’s a whiff of change in the air. When
Hollywood last did Vikings we were subjected to the violently naked chin of
Kirk Douglas, but the History Channel’s series ‘Vikings’ is almost as hairy as
history could desire. Improbable film actors are beginning to sprout strange
growths, almost as if the age of the Pretty Boy is beginning to give way to a
new fashion for Manliness. If it is, I think it started with one particular
man, who’s been my own saviour whenever I’ve been challenged about beards on my
characters. ‘Beards?’ says my agent doubtfully. ‘Aragorn,’ I reply smugly. ‘Viggo
Mortensen. Like that.’ ‘Ah,’ says my agent, visibly relieved. ‘Like that.’

Like this...

That’s good, I suppose – but I still can’t help feeling it
shouldn’t matter. If the next fashion dictates that all heroes should have
beards, does that mean we need to stick them on Julius Caesar and Winston
Churchill? Fashion now should not dictate fashion then, and all I ask is the
freedom to be true to my period.

Because it matters – and sometimes it matters a lot. It
couldn’t be more important than in my present book on the Crimean War,
when circumstances compelled our commanders to rescind the standing orders on
shaving. By January 1855 every last root had been grubbed from the ground to
feed the precious fires, men lost limbs to frostbite and froze to death in
their tents – and I’m supposed to have a hero so vain he’ll use lifesaving hot
water to shave?

I don't think so. And not just because it
matters to history, but because it mattered to the men themselves. Those beards
grew from endurance of life-shattering experience, and the men who came home
went on wearing them as a badge of pride. A ‘Crimean beard’ was a proof of
manhood and survival, and many men wore them right up to their deaths.

Maybe it didn’t suit everyone – and maybe that’s important
too. We’re not writing fashion parades, we’re after character, and the levels
of it in this single photograph are probably beyond anything I could ever hope
to write.

This is Colour Sergeant Timothy Gowing of the 7th Royal
Fusiliers, still showing the Crimean beard he probably ought to have removed as
soon as he stepped off the ship. It’s a fine beard, but even years after the
war it can’t disguise the fact that the face behind it is too young for such
gravitas.

Or is it? The beard is of a mature man, the face of a young one, but
behind the eyes is something sadder and older than either. This is the Gowing
who wrote of the Grand Sortie ‘our bayonets were bent like reaping hooks’, and
when we look behind the eyes we see an experience of hell itself.

And that’s what we write, isn’t it? What’s behind the eyes?
I need the beards to capture not the look, but the experience, and there’s so much
of it to be learned in Crimea. How did it feel for a lifelong clean-shaven NCO
to have to allow the creeping growth of something he’s been trained to regard
as filthy? How did it affect the rebellious soldier who revelled in the sudden
independence of doing what he liked with his own face? Did discipline suffer? As
officers and men grew physically alike, did the boundaries between them start to
break – and did relationships change? These are all questions for individuals,
but individuals are what I write, and if I’m to go there, be there, and feel
it, then I can’t exclude so huge a part of what they experienced.

And that’s the key for me. Maybe Crimea is a special case,
but whenever we write men then beards have to be part of it - if only because
they have to be shaved. Ignore them, and we’re writing women in breeches. I use
them constantly in the Chevalier series, and found they gave me another layer
every time. I even liked the minor character of Thibault in ‘Honour and the
Sword’, because I could show both his youth and his vanity in his concern for
how his whiskers would turn out – then give the reader an extra stab at his
death by recalling the weedy little bristles that would never now grow into
anything at all.

Tiny things sometimes. The disgusting nature of one
character from the things caught in his beard, the vanity of another from the
way he shaves his sideburns, the sound of a man’s hand playing with the little
bristles that line his jaw. I grappled for ages with a scene where a man meets the
beloved brother he thought was dead – until I remembered the physical reality
of what would have happened in their year of separation and knew what he had to
say. Nothing emotional, nothing embarrassing, he says ‘That’s a bloody terrible
beard,’ and I’m in.

‘In’. That’s where we want to be, and why we shouldn’t be
bothered by what our characters look like to outsiders. I don’t mind too much
what cover artists do (and for the next book I’m steeled to expect a back view of
men in the trenches) as long as I can do what I do within the pages. And sometimes,
just sometimes, I'm afraid that’s going to mean beards.

***

Thanks to Dr Jeff Meek for the recommendation to John Repton's book

At 7.30pm tonight A L Berridge will be at the Old Bell in Finedon with J.D. Davies - discussing warriors and possibly their beards.

9 comments:

Fascinating post, thank you. Funnily enough a protagonist has just 'lost' his beard in the edit because it felt wrong - like a sign that he was hiding something, a villain in disguise. It is interesting that beards have become synonymous with the villain/deception in the West. Living in the M East, they are very much part of the culture - even the male sixth formers at my DD's school sport fledgling beards. I guess, designer stubble aside, the 70s were the last era - probably due for a revival (and we already have Movember). The reference to Ancient Egypt's false beards reminded me of Nursie/Bernard in Blackadder, who wore Redbeard's as a gesture of remembrance ;)

This was a great post! I had never thought about the absence of beards in cover art before.

Having been startled by my lovely clean shaven husband arriving back from abroad with a beard, I am all for them. He looks great with or without one. Yesterday his beard gave him an Elizabethan Spanish nobleman look, and other days it can be more man of the forest! In honour of his, and all the beards you mention, I shall definitely try to remember to put a man with beard in my next book!

Kate - that's really interesting. I read somewhere (can't remember where, unfortunately) that the phrase 'open countenance' was based on just this gut feeling - that a face hidden by a beard was secretive and not to be trusted. And d'oh! How could I have forgotten Blackadder?

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